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"9"Written By: L.
Valensi
Rating: R Warnings: Suspense/Romance, hefty amount of gratuitous
violence; some abuse; lots of minor OCs & general term-invention Summary: The story is set in A.C. 205, little
less than ten years since the series ended in Endless Waltz. It centers
around the new life of Spoilers: Everything; Set Post-Mariemaia
Chapter 7: Me, My Yoke, and I -- -- Won’t you beat my drum? -- A.C. 205 – Lagrange Two: Just Outside the Graveyard The heat of battle hits Heero the moment he steps out of his military humvee, thickening his lungs the same way war had done nearly ten years ago. He runs towards the encampment and pulls aside random soldiers, asking them for Wufei’s whereabouts. They point him towards a bunker to the east of the encampment, where the Preventers succeeded earlier in driving back Orion’s forces. He calls out to Wufei, who jumps down from the top of the barricade and runs over. “What are you doing here?” He says, wiping dirt from his cheek. “I thought you’d left for good. I called earlier but you were with the Minister Peacecraft at the summit. I hope they discussed the state of things here at length, because we need as many troops here as possible to quell this before it gets even more out of hand.” “The Minister Peacecraft has ordered the troops personally and are following me here with all the provisions you’ve asked for,” Heero states to a pleased Wufei. “This will be over before you know it.” “So what are you doing here?” Wufei repeats, though he already knows the answer. “He’s not here, you know.” “I know,” Heero states, “But I also need time to find him. Meanwhile, I’m here to help.” “Good,” Wufei says, “Because I’m going in to take out Orion’s headquarters, and I need you to break the Canis Major stronghold in the west,” “Mission accepted,” Heero says, smirking. -- Heero outfits himself in a spare Preventers stealth uniform, armed only with two grenades, a time bomb, and a handgun. He run haphazardly through the bloodbath, taking down anything that moved before him and miraculously dodging the crazed firing of guns all around him. He dives behind remnants of a broken building and crawls around, taking down two men in a shooting frenzy with two clean shots to the head. He shoves the two bodies off a sewage entrance and drops down to the muck below. According to directions from Wufei, when Heero hits the westernmost wall, there will be a ladder leading up to just outside the building being held hostage by the Canis Major forces. Heero sees it and climbs the ladder, hearing rushing footsteps and the thudding of explosions above. He counts to three before he pushes against the pothole lid with all his strength and throws it aside. He hears warnings being called out but he’s already unpinned a grenade and thrown it in the direction of the voices. The grenade explodes and Heero climbs out into open air and runs for the nearest wall as gunshots follow him. “We’re being infiltrated!” Someone shouts, but most of the men are busy fending off Preventers to care. Some men are pulled away and pointed to Heero’s direction, but Heero manages to take out one or two before he finds the building’s fire escape. He jumps and takes hold of the ladder, bracing himself for the quick fall. Upon hearing bullets ricochet off the red metal of the ladder, he speedily heads upwards and winds around the stairs. He kicks open the door at the top and begins to shoot down all the shocked henchmen in his path. Once the hallway is clear of men, he spies a large vent in the ceiling. He grabs hold of the pipes two feet away from the vent and swings violently enough to kick the shaft cover off. He jumps and brings himself up in time to hear the presence of more men come to take him down. He races down the ventilation shafts, hurrying to where the door to the stairs is located. When he finds it, he jumps down from the shaft and enters the door, killing every man unlucky enough to cross his path. He reaches the first floor and readies the time bomb in his hands, setting it to explode in five minutes. He pushes the doors open and sees the men of Canis Major, with Major himself yelling orders to everyone holding a gun. Bullets, missile shooters, and guns littered the floor, as well as hundreds of henchmen shooting wildly out the windows. Heero throws the time bomb amidst the sea of killers before any of them can react to his presence. He catches the eye of Canis Major as he kills the two men directly in front of him and prepares to jump out the window. “SHOOT HIM!” Sirius Canis Major screams, but Heero breaks the window in one swift kick and jumps through before the men switch their target. As he runs to safety, however, Heero is shot in the leg by one of Major’s men. He stumbles, but continues moving in jagged patterns. In the last moments before the explosion, Heero manages to throw himself into the backseat of a bullet-worn car, which is thrown to its side by the massive aftershock of the bomb. Heero, still inside the car, hears the Preventers cheering and moving into the Canis Major territory rapidly. He removes a walkie-talkie from his pocket and says to Wufei, “Mission accomplished.” “Good to hear,” Wufei answers back quickly. “I’ve got things taken care of here, too. You get out okay?” “My leg’s been shot,” Heero says, “But I’m alright.” “I’ll be there in ten minutes with some of our medics,” Says Wufei. Heero drops the walkie-talkie and pops out of the car’s broken backseat window, fragments of glass inching their way into his skin despite the thick gloves. He watches the Preventers arrest the leftover Canis Major men, in shock at their sudden defeat, and sees Wufei’s humvee racing towards him, siren blaring. He runs out, followed by the perennially beautiful Sally Po and two medics wheeling out a stretcher. “Come on, we’re taking you to back to the base,” Sally says with a warm smile. Heero shakes his head, refusing to get into the stretcher, but Wufei orders the two medics to accost him into it. Heero, tired, stops fighting and lies down. He closes his eyes and thinks of Duo. -- Sally is kneeling on the ground, bandaging up Heero’s wounded leg. “You can’t move it, can you?” She asks, and Heero nods. “That means some nerves were hit. You might have to stay here a while ‘til you start feeling something again.” “I can move my feet,” He lies, and Sally knows it. “Where’s Wufei? I need to speak with him.” Sally smiles and tells Wufei to come over through a walkie-talkie. She leaves Heero in the tent and five minutes later, Wufei walks through the door, looking relieved. “We’ve got most of everything under control now,” He reports. “What did you need?” “Where’s Duo?” “I don’t know. I didn’t ask; I told him I wanted no part in his revenge,” Wufei says, “But if you want a guess, then he’s probably going after Volans on a suicide mission as we speak.” One of Wufei’s men calls out to him and he turns his attention to the soldier to listen to his report. When he turns back around to face Heero, he finds he’s already gone, and so is is laptop. -- Heero hobbles to a tent a good distance away from where Wufei is and waits for the men inside to leave. He goes in, zips the tent up, and connects Wufei’s laptop to the supplemental electronics available. After he is enabled access to the mainframe, Heero pulls up the satellite tracking program and types in several numbers. The computer runs the numbers and comes up with the diagram of the Volans Estate, proving Wufei’s guesses correctly. With almost genius precision, he memorizes the schematics of the Estate. He picks up every weapon he can see inside the tent and makes his way towards his humvee with an icy determination. The only difference this time is that he’s no longer on a mission. -- A.C. 205 – Somewhere Above the Mediterranean Sea Heero swiftly flew across the southeastern Mediterranean Sea, headed to the nearest secret PW facility possible. He’s pushed the jet to its speed limits, feeling something like panic for the first time in a long time. He felt confident enough that at this distance, auto-pilot mode was suitable. After all, there was someone in grave danger of dying right beside him. Disoriented, he turned his attention to the seriously hemorrhaging Duo sitting upright and completely bare beside him. He’d only managed to use his shirt as a bandage, but the blood was flowing relentlessly like a waterfall. Duo was feverish and his skin was like ice. His eyes were flickering in strange patterns; Heero reckoned he’d never stayed long enough in one place to watch a stranger slowly die, let alone someone he knew. He was struck by an odd concern for the man before him, but it was just now that he acknowledged it completely. No, that’s not it, he realized. He wasn’t concerned so much as angry. As he removed his pants to try and quell the bleeding more effectively, he remembered something Duo’d said to him before, when they were younger and still partners. “I’m surprised… Heero,” whispered a barely-conscious Duo, as if the fading ex-pilot were reading his mind. “You… really turn up in the most… unexpected places…” Then the other went limp. Heero’s heart pounded as he reached to touch Duo’s neck to check for a pulse. It’s there, but it’s fading, he thinks. He rips his pants to expose as much cloth as possible and rapidly winds it around Duo’s severely wounded stomach. I can’t hold you on much longer, but we’re almost there, Duo. Thirty minutes later, Heero landed the jet right on top of a big building somewhere in the city of Tunis. He hurriedly took Duo in his arms and ran desperately to the facility’s clinic. He’d arranged ahead of time for the doctors inside to have everything ready for an emergency case, and soon enough Duo was in a stretcher being wheeled to surgery. Nobody even bothered to ask why Heero was almost naked when they saw the tattered clothing tied messily around the pale man that had been in his arms a mere thirty seconds ago. It took four hours of surgery before they were able to come out and tell Heero that Duo would be okay, but only barely. It seemed that a sharp object, a scalpel, had cut open a five inch gash on the side of his stomach and was lodged inside the entire time. One of his kidneys was lacerated because of it and he lost nearly 55% of the amount of blood in his body. They were just about to sew him up, but before the surgeon turned to leave Heero grabbed his arm and put a small chip in his hand. “I need you to put that inside of him,” Heero requested. “Find a way so that it won’t hurt him. But find a way.” The surgeon nodded and made his way back into the operating room. Heero, relieved, went downstairs and prepared to have Duo brought to the high-security wing of the building as soon as the operation was over. That evening, the nurses wheeled Duo into his room, where Heero was peacefully sleeping. He awoke just as the nurses began to lift Duo into the bed. Heero got up and helped them, thanking them as they wheeled the stretcher back out and left the two men alone. Heero stayed up the entire night watching him, bringing along a five-hundred-page report to keep himself occupied. Every once in a while he would get up and get himself some coffee, because he wondered that if he slept, Duo would be gone when he woke up. The idiot seems persistent enough, he thought, and he wondered whimsically why. “Oh man, this is gonna be quite the battle, isn’t it?” He says, piloting the transport plane above the fighting below us. What a nuisance; it’s like he doesn’t know what he’s doing or fighting for. “This mission’s really big,” I say, condescending. “I don’t think you get it.” He’s like an undisciplined child and the future’s on the line. I don’t really care for people like him; they’re the most likely to die in these situations. They don’t know how to keep distance. He doesn’t know what a soldier’s supposed to be. “You bet I do,” He says, but I’m not convinced. “This is our chance to finally destroy the OZ organization.” “This time is different,” I reply. I knew he didn’t get it. How annoying. “We’re gonna eliminate every OZ leader.” But then he says, “Yeah. Then I can go back to space,” and I don’t know what to say. I don’t get it. He’s supposed to have the mission’s goal in mind; that’s what a soldier’s for. What a stupid thing to succeed in battle for, going back to space. What does space hold for him? All there is for us is a nameless existence wherever we live. Why’s he so damn happy about it? It’s morning before Heero was woken up by the soft rustling on the bed. He’d been entranced by the memory of their war, burned deep into his mind. He watched Duo’s eyes flutter open, the sun shining against the clarity of his wide indigo eyes. “Don’t move too much,” He said to the other. -- A.C. 205 – The Volans Estate Volans taps his hairy fingers on his desk, obviously seething. Hilde sits across from him with a vacuous expression. He throws a pile of papers in her face and points menacingly to the television above him. “Are you gonna tell me that you don’t give a shit about this, Schbeiker? Huh?!” He yells, slamming his fist on the table and shaking all the ornaments off. Hilde barely flinches. “You little bitch… you said everything would work out perfectly, and all that’s fuckin’ happening is that we’re losing. And that bastard still has Wing Zero! You said it would be in that fuckin’ underground safehouse of his!” “I lied,” Hilde says quietly. “What the hell do you mean, ‘you lied,’ you fucking whore!” Volans explodes shoving everything off his table in one fell swoop. Hilde remains sitting stoically in her chair. “I had you blow up that underground facility to bring Duo to you,” Hilde explains calmly. “Every person Duo cared about was in that safehouse. And now they’re gone.” “And how the fuck is that little shit coming here and trying to kill me do me any good?!” “Because your base is underground, too,” She says. “He will come here and he will plan to kill you—that’s precisely right. That’s all he feels has left to do. But since we know that, then he’s essentially trapped. And you will get your revenge—including Wing Zero.” Volans grips his desk and is settled by the cool confidence of Hilde’s skillful arrangements. He sits back down and sighs, displeased, but rational all the same. He has already dispersed most of his men to engage in the battle taking place in L2 to protect his territory and to establish dominance over the other networks if and when the war is won. But according to the coverage, the Preventers are making more progress since both the Canis Major and Orion strongholds have been destroyed; if he’s going to lose the war to the government, he thinks, he might as well get something out of it. And Wing Zero’s head—and moreover, the ZERO System—is worth it all in the end. However, he wonders about the laconic ex-business partner of Duo Maxwell sitting across from him. -- A.C. 203 – The Graveyard Hilde sat in Duo’s office to take over completely business operations for the week since he was very, very sick with a cold. She didn’t particularly like being in Duo’s office, simply because it was so dark and gloomy and colorless. All she could see was red and black. Even the paintings he had on the wall were sad and lonely (she especially found the painting with the four people in the ‘Phillies’ bar late at night profoundly depressing). The only things of noticeable color were a book called The Unbearable Lightness of Being and the golden picture frame sitting on Duo’s desk. Whenever she looked at it, she frowned, because— A sudden knocking at the door pulled her away from her thoughts. Who could be here so late at night? She wondered as she opened the door. There stood Karluv Volans and Victor Leo Minor, the two owners of the Shoreline Salvaging Company and Lion’s Den Salvaging (respectively). She greeted them happily and asked them to have a seat. “What can I do for you gentlemen today?” She asked, chipper. She was unsure whether she should be as happy as she was because both the men before her bore very grave expressions. “Don’t play dumb, Schbeiker!” Leo Minor yelled. Hilde was taken aback. “Excuse me?” She asked him, confused about the hostility directed at her. “Calm down, Victor, let me do the talking,” Volans said. “Miss Schbeiker, has Mr. Maxwell informed you of his recent actions?” Hilde thought about it, but Duo hadn’t told her anything of importance. “No,” She replied. “Nothing particularly notable.” “Then I will assume he did not tell you about his illegal procurement of a very important item from Mr. Leo Minor here,” Volans stated. His eyes were like daggers though his voice was steady, at least it felt that way to Hilde. What was he talking about, Hilde thinks, Duo stole something? “Yes, Maxwell stole something very important from me,” Leo Minor growled. “And I want it back immediately!” “I’m sorry,” said Hilde. “If Duo had stolen something, he would have told me. But since he didn’t, I’m going to have to disagree with you on this. He hasn’t taken anything.” “You’re very incorrect,” Volans responds. “Because only he would have any vested interest in stealing the head of Wing Zero.” Hilde looked at him, astounded to the point of silence. “Am I right, Miss Schbeiker?” Why… why wouldn’t he tell me? Why would he lie about this? Haven’t I done enough for him to trust me? Do I mean so little still…? She could feel the anger welling up inside her heart; it was a rage that had been building up slowly over the years, after every failed attempt at a relationship with Duo, after doing all that he asked and more. She sat there, still. Both men stood up. Volans slid a business card across the table toward Hilde. “When you’re ready to make arrangements to give it back, give me a call,” Volans said with sinister amusement. “It is, after all, your duty. Weren’t you one of those volunteers ready to save the world? Well… what do you think he’s planning to do with that head, if he hasn’t destroyed it already?” Volans laughs and turns to her one more time before he leaves. “Just so you know, he probably hasn’t.” Hilde had been balling her fists so hard that her nails had cut into her skin, sending streams of blood down to the table. She glowered hatefully at the photograph on Duo’s desk as if she were Medea looking down upon Jason from her burning chariot in the sky. In this very instant, she realized everything possible there was to know about Duo Maxwell. “It’s always been about you, hasn’t it?” She said to the picture of Heero and Duo, taken somewhere during a resting period when Heero was bandaging a wounded hand and Duo was suspiciously hanging around in the background. Whoever had taken the picture caught Duo before he had a chance to cover his face with his hand. Heero looked back at Hilde with that stern, irritated look. “After this is all over, I’m going to make him realize you’re not worth anything.” -- A.C. 205 – The Volans Estate “Hilde,” Volans calls out as Hilde begins to exit his office. “Why are you so bent on destroying Maxwell? Weren’t you his wife or something?” Hilde stops in her tracks but doesn’t turn around. Volans expects an answer, but Hilde just leaves. She walks down a few halls and down the elevator some four floors, grimly downcast in every movement. Why are you so bent on destroying Maxwell? She puts her hand on a sensor-pad and is granted access into her room. She sits in front of a dimly-illuminated laptop and accesses the computer’s call-function. “Hilde Schbeiker, reporting to the Vice Foreign Minister Relena Peacecraft,” She states, and the receiving ends puts her through. After a minute, Relena’s face appears before Hilde on the laptop. “Miss Schbeiker,” Relena says, nodding her head slightly. “What is the status of our operations?” “Volans has decided to stop pursuing the battle on L2, seeing as the Preventers have succeeded in turning the tides to the government’s favor,” Hilde relays. “However, our plans will only succeed upon the arrival of Duo Maxwell here.” “Are you certain that you will be able to extract the information from him this time?” Relena asks strictly. “There has been too much death on his behalf. We cannot allow any more of it.” “I’m certain, Minister,” Hilde answers. “I will have this taken care of, as well as the problem of Volans. I’m sure that we will have obtained the Gundam head by tomorrow, at the least.” “In that case, I will be sending in troops by tomorrow morning to pick up the perpetrators and to find the Gundam head as soon as possible. In order to preserve peace, we must find it, and we must destroy it. It cannot be allowed to exist. I thank you for understanding,” Relena says and then nods farewell to Hilde. “Good luck.” Hilde shuts off the monitor and unplugs the computer, settling it back into a titanium briefcase. She walks over to the bathroom and begins to undress. She looks at herself in the mirror, ashamed at the culpability written clear across her face—her whole body. She shakes head to try and take the image away. “It’s almost over, Duo,” She speaks softly, reminiscent of the Hilde Duo once knew. “And then we’ll start again.” ~ * ~ |
